Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

After a tumultuous year for the official, Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero has now issued 31 arrest warrants against a group of scientists, researchers and academics who had previously accused him of plagiarism. 

Just this past July, members of academic group National System of Investigators (SNI) had publicly denounced Gertz Manero for copying text word-for-word when writing his admission into the organization.

Now, Gertz Manero’s revenge-driven warrants accuse them of operating with illicit resources and organized crime, and they are now facing being held in Mexico’s maximum security prison El Altiplano.

The move comes just days after Gertz Manero’s niece was released from prison, after she had been arrested on a warrant Gertz Manero had issued claiming she had killed his brother, her father, through negligence.

After much controversy about Gertz Manero’s motivations for the arrest and his potential abuse of power, District Judge Patricia Marcela Diez Cerda annulled the warrant on Sept. 17, claiming the original document to be “inconsistent, contradictory and lacking any legal motivation.”